Personal Effects is a new iteration of Roberto Jamora’s series titled An Inventory of Traces. An attempt at committing important events of his life to memory via painting, for Jamora, each gradient is a vignette of an experience, place, or person. Paint mixed with pumice gel is swiped across the canvas. Simultaneously, illusionistic space is anticipated and denied; a thin trace of color is revealed and color triggers recollections.

The title, Personal Effects, invokes property that one carries on their person; but what about the things they carry that are unseen and immaterial? The loss of a loved one—a person-shaped hole; the family in the Philippines one holds through a Facebook photo and weeps; the joys of being under concert lights that make a lover’s skin look neon pink; the sun rising again over the Appalachian mountains, a reminder that you too can rise.

Each gradient and incision are both spectacular and everyday, familiar but also distant. Jamora’s paintings are quiet provocations that ask the viewer to reflect on the meanings and power of color.